Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Shadow of China - John Lone (1989) - Sha Lo Tung, Tai Po

Moving on to this seemingly lost gem of a film that was shot in 1989 and almost became victim of the Tiananmen Square massacre and Typhoon Brenda (you can read more of the behind-the-scenes stuff on this post with Neil MacDonald). It doesn't look like the film has been given and DVD release but, luckily, our good friend, AP, managed to get both a HK VHS version as well as a US Laserdisc version for me to see and it looks as though the US version has a few more scenes (and locations) thrown in, so the following posts will be a mishmash of the two versions. So many thanks to AP for tracking them down.

Anyway, the plot follows two refugees from China as they escape to HK, one of them (Vivian Wu) becomes a night club singer whilst the other (John Lone) becomes a rich, successful (and rather scheming) businessman whose unknown past comes back to haunt him.

The film starts with the pair as they make their way towards the Hong Kong border. They pass through a rural village on their way and witness a bit of post-Gang of Four persecution before moving on. The location is not really rural China but is the abandoned village of Sha Lo Tung in the north part of Tai Po.

We've seen this place last when it was used for the filming of Bamboo in Winter. Coincidentally, both films location-managed by Neil and both on this blog courtesy of the fact that he told me about them in that previous blog entry (see the link at the top of the post).